Parker×Twain

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   You're with Reborn Radio. Coming up: Dorothy Parker sits down with Mark Twain for ROAST NIGHT. The subject — On a person they wronged, and whether they ever apologized.
2. 00:10
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   Well, this should be therapeutic. Nothing like dragging out your worst behavior for public consumption. I assume we're meant to confess and weep?
3. 00:17
   Mark Twainshare moment

   I've been dead since 1910, Mrs. Parker. If I haven't apologized by now, I suspect the moment has passed. Though I admit there's a man I never made peace with, and it's sat with me longer than I'd like.
4. 00:31
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   Only one? How economical of you. I've got a roster. But if we're picking favorites, I'd say mine's a woman I skewered in print. Clare Boothe Luce. Well, skewered is gentle. I filleted her.
5. 00:45
   Mark Twainshare moment

   Luce. The playwright? I'm not acquainted, but the name sounds like it comes with a trust fund and opinions.
6. 00:53
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   Both, and she wore them like armor. We loathed each other with the kind of purity you rarely find outside of marriage. She said something vapid at a party once, held a door and said, 'Age before beauty.' So I walked through and said, 'Pearls before swine.' Got a good laugh. Printed everywhere.
7. 01:12
   Mark Twainshare moment

   That's a decent line. I'd have used it myself if the opportunity arose.
8. 01:16
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   It's also a lie. I never said it. Someone else did, or maybe no one did, but it got attached to me and I never corrected it. Let it ride. She spent years thinking I'd said it, hating me for it, and I let her.
9. 01:32
   Mark Twainshare moment

   So your great wrong is taking credit for an insult you didn't deliver? That's a curious sort of guilt.
10. 01:38
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    No, the guilt is that I wish I had said it. I wronged her by not caring that she was wronged. I built a whole career on my tongue, and the one time I get famous for something I didn't say, I just shrugged. What's your man's name?
11. 01:51
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Bret Harte. We were friends once, out in California, young and poor and stupid. We wrote together, drank together, thought we'd conquer the world as a team.
12. 02:03
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    I'm hearing past tense, which means someone betrayed someone.
13. 02:06
    Mark Twainshare moment

    He got famous first. His stories hit, and he went east, and I stayed behind thinking we were still partners. Then he started taking credit for things we'd worked on together. Said I'd been his assistant, his pupil. Made me sound like the help.
14. 02:22
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    And you repaid him how? Public evisceration? A novel with a recognizable villain?
15. 02:27
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I cut him dead. Wouldn't speak to him. He wrote me letters, tried to reconcile, and I sent them back unopened. When he fell on hard times years later, I made sure people knew he'd been a plagiarist and a liar. I told anyone who'd listen that Bret Harte was a fraud.
16. 02:45
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Was he?
17. 02:46
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Partly. But I was also young and proud and my feelings were hurt. I've wondered since if I destroyed more than he deserved. He died poor, you know. Died in England, away from home, and I never said a kind word about him after 1877.
18. 03:03
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Did you want to?
19. 03:04
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Toward the end of my life, yes. I thought about writing something, setting the record straight. Saying he had talent, that we had been friends. But I never did. Pride, I suppose. Or cowardice. Same thing, mostly.
20. 03:20
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    I don't think it's cowardice to refuse to apologize. Sometimes an apology is just vanity in a different costume. You want absolution, so you foist your guilt onto the other person and make them forgive you. Very selfish, when you think about it.
21. 03:35
    Mark Twainshare moment

    That's a fine rationalization, Mrs. Parker, but it sounds like something a person says when they don't want to say sorry.
22. 03:42
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Of course it is. I don't want to say sorry. Clare Boothe Luce went on to have a marvelous life. Congress, ambassadorships, money. My little non-insult didn't slow her down. Why should I apologize for something that didn't even happen?
23. 03:56
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Because it did happen. Maybe you didn't say the words, but you let her believe you did. That's a species of lie, and you know it.
24. 04:04
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Fine. It's a lie. But I was a critic. My job was to have a low opinion of people and express it beautifully. She gave as good as she got, believe me. We were evenly matched.
25. 04:14
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Then why bring her up tonight? If you're so evenly matched and unbothered, why's she the name on your lips?
26. 04:20
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Because I saw her at a party once, years later. She looked at me like I was something stuck to her shoe. And I realized she really believed I'd said it. That she'd carried it all that time. And I thought, I should tell her. I should just say it wasn't me.
27. 04:35
    Mark Twainshare moment

    But you didn't.
28. 04:36
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    But I didn't. I ordered another drink and told myself it didn't matter. Which is a lie I'm apparently still telling.
29. 04:43
    Mark Twainshare moment

    We're a pair, aren't we? You won't apologize for a witticism you didn't commit, and I wouldn't apologize for a grudge I did. Both of us just waiting for the other person to die so we could feel better about it.
30. 04:56
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Did it work? Feeling better, now that Harte's gone?
31. 04:59
    Mark Twainshare moment

    No. Turns out when a man dies, he takes your chance to make amends with him. Inconvenient, that. I think about him more now than I did when he was alive.
32. 05:10
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    I don't think about Clare much at all. Except when someone asks, like tonight, and then I think about her constantly for ten minutes and feel vaguely sick.
33. 05:18
    Mark Twainshare moment

    That's called a conscience, Mrs. Parker. They're standard issue, though some folks misplace theirs early.
34. 05:25
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    I didn't misplace mine. I just trained it to shut up during business hours. Writers can't afford too much conscience. It gums up the works.
35. 05:34
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I'll grant you that. I wrote some cruel things in my time. Mark Twain was a character I played, and that character didn't apologize. Sam Clemens, the man, had regrets. But nobody wanted to hear from him.
36. 05:48
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    That's the trouble, isn't it? The public wants the blade, not the hand that holds it. They want Dorothy Parker, not Dottie Rothschild from the Upper West Side who cried at dog kennels.
37. 05:59
    Mark Twainshare moment

    You cried at dog kennels?
38. 06:01
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Constantly. I'm a complete mess about animals. But that doesn't sell books.
39. 06:05
    Mark Twainshare moment

    No, it does not. People want the myth. They want me in a white suit smoking a cigar, not Sam Clemens in his bathrobe worrying about money.
40. 06:14
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    So we wronged people in service of the myth. That's the story we're telling?
41. 06:17
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I think it's simpler than that. We wronged people because we were human and flawed, and then we justified it later because we were writers and that's what we do. We make narratives out of our sins.
42. 06:30
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Well, that's bleak. I came here for witty banter, not spiritual audit.
43. 06:33
    Mark Twainshare moment

    You brought up Clare Boothe Luce. I'm just following your lead into the darkness.
44. 06:38
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    If I could go back, I don't know that I'd do it differently. That's the real sin, maybe. Not the lie, but the fact that I'd probably lie again.
45. 06:47
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I'd like to think I'd handle Bret Harte better. Write him a letter, acknowledge the good with the bad. But I was stubborn then and I'm stubborn now, so who knows?
46. 06:58
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Do you think apologies even work? I mean really. Does saying sorry ever actually repair anything, or does it just make the apologizer feel noble?
47. 07:08
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I think it depends on whether you mean it. Most apologies are just noise. But a real one, the kind that costs you something, that might be worth the breath it takes.
48. 07:19
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    I couldn't apologize to Clare now if I wanted to. She died in 1987. I went first, for once.
49. 07:26
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Bret died in 1902. I had eight years to write him a letter, and I spent them being proud instead. So I suppose we're both stuck with it.
50. 07:35
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    You know what the worst part is? I don't think either of them cared as much as we think they did. They probably went on with their lives, had other enemies, other triumphs. We're the ones still chewing on it.
51. 07:46
    Mark Twainshare moment

    That's possible. Likely, even. But it doesn't let us off the hook. Just because they survived our cruelty doesn't mean we weren't cruel.
52. 07:55
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    No, it doesn't. But it does mean I can stop pretending I'm haunted by Clare Boothe Luce and admit I'm mostly haunted by myself.
53. 08:03
    Mark Twainshare moment

    That's about the size of it. We wrong people, we don't apologize, and then we spend the rest of our lives explaining why we were right not to. It's a hell of a way to live.
54. 08:13
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    And yet here we are, still doing it. Still defending our old grudges like they're family heirlooms.
55. 08:18
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Well, Mrs. Parker, I suppose if we were the type to apologize easily, we wouldn't have been very good at what we did.
56. 08:25
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    No. We'd have been much nicer and much duller. So here's to our sins, I guess. At least they're interesting.
57. 08:32
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I'll drink to that. Though I notice neither of us actually said we were sorry.
58. 08:37
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    No. And I don't suppose we're going to start now, are we?
59. 08:40
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Not tonight. Maybe not ever. But at least we're honest about it.
60. 08:45
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    That'll have to do.